Russian warships have entered Syrian territorial waters in an aggressive move designed to prevent any NATO-led attack on the country under the guise of a “humanitarian intervention”.

“Russian warships are due to arrive at Syrian territorial waters, a Syrian news agency said on Thursday, indicating that the move represented a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country’s civil unrest,” reports Haaretz.

As we saw prior to the attack on Libya, which was also framed as a “humanitarian intervention,” NATO powers are keen to demonize Assad’s government by characterizing attacks by his forces as atrocities while largely ignoring similar attacks by opposition forces, such as this week’s raid on a Syrian air force intelligence complex that killed or wounded 20 security police.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner rejects Russia’s claim that Syria is in a civil war, stating, “We believe it’s very much the Assad regime carrying out a campaign of violence, intimidation, and repression against innocent protesters.”

Of course, we heard similar rhetoric even as NATO-backed Al-Qaeda rebels were commandeerng fighter jets and firing rocket-propelled grenades in Libya, actions also undertaken by “innocent protesters,” we were told at the time.

As we have previously reported, despite overwhelming speculation that Iran will be the next target of a military assault, Syria is the likeliest target for the next salvo of NATO-backed regime change.

Press TV reports that NATO has bombed a university in Tripoli, killing students and staff. “New images have emerged showing the aftermath of an alleged NATO air raid targeting Tripoli’s Nasser University. The attack reportedly left many university staff and students dead,” reports the Iranian state-funded network. “Libyan state television says dozens of others were also injured.”

According to the Christian Science Monitor, “evidence of casualties [in Libya] has been thin, despite more than 160 cruise missile strikes by US and British forces, and at least 175 sorties by those and French and a Canadian jet fighter in the last 24-hour count.”

Evidence is “thin” because the corporate media refuses to believe the Libyan government and does not actively research claims of civilian deaths. Humanitarian wars are usually reported as surgical strikes and when the reality of dead civilians can no longer be denied, they are explained away as collateral damage.

Soon after NATO began bombing the country, officials denied civilians die in its bombing raids. Only the death of Gaddafi loyalists and other Libyans criminalized by the United Nations are reported killed in the air strikes.

Last week the New York Times insisted bombing raids in heavily populated urban areas do not kill civilians. “The Libyan government has a growing record of improbable statements and carefully manipulated news events,” wrote John Burns, following his Pentagon script closely. “Sightings of civilian casualties have been rare.”

The New York Times also reported that aluminum tubes were sighted in Iraq. Due in part to the widely reported lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the United States invaded the country and subsequently killed over a million Iraqis.

A NATO air strike in Tripoli, a city of 2 million people. NATO and the New York Times would have you believe civilians do not die in such raids.

According to Pentagon figures allegedly released by Wikileaks, the invasion of Iraq resulted in the death of 66,081 civilians. The U.S. installed Iraqi Iraqi Health Ministry put the number at 87,215. In 2007, a ORB survey of Iraq War casualties put the number at 1.2 million.

On May 31, Libya accused NATO of killing 718 civilians and wounding 4,067 in 10 weeks of air strikes. “Since March 19, and up to May 26, there have been 718 martyrs among civilians and 4,067 wounded — 433 of them seriously,” said government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, citing health ministry figures which the AFP said cannot be independently verified.

Joshalyn Lawrence filmed Libyans wounded during NATO air strikes. “The Lawrence videos, on the WBAIX channel, of hospitalized civilians is evidence that, rather than injuries and killings by bombs being ‘rare’ or reporting ‘blunders,’ they are realities,” writes Deborah Dupre for Bay View. “In the videos, one after another wounded innocent civilian described atrocities to Cynthia McKinney, in a fact-finding mission with a team including a delegation of former MPs and professors from France, all now in Tripoli.”

“Interestingly, the efforts of the Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press and others to portray Libya’s claims on the bombings as ‘absurd’ are patently false and are merely efforts to defend in the court of public opinion the indefensible bombing of civilians going about their lives in a heavily populated area,” the former Georgia Congress woman wrote on June 7.

The blood-thirsty neocons, of course, called McKinney’s fact finding mission an act of terrorism. “McKinney is part of a long Western leftist tradition of progressive sycophants traveling to adversarial lands in an effort to undermine America,” writes FrontPage Mag, the mouthpiece of former Marxist David Horowitz, who received money from the known CIA operativeRichard Mellon Scaife.

The corporate media mostly ignored McKinney’s trip and her reports of civilian deaths and continued to follow the Pentagon script as it has now for decades.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
April 26, 2011Just like Libya, a civil war fought between a desperate regime and a western-backed force of Islamic militants is being misrepresented as a genocide against “pro-democracy” protesters in order to lay the groundwork for another contrived “humanitarian” war.

Despite the fact that western media is completely cut off from entering Syria and therefore unable to verify reports of hundreds of murders carried out by security forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, grainy and often misconstrued YouTube videos have been cited as proof positive that Assad is overseeing a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, but a whistleblower living in Syria has contacted us to express his disbelief at such claims, dismissing them as little more than fabricated fairy-tales designed to law the groundwork for yet another NATO-backed military intervention based on contrived “humanitarian” grounds.

Although there is no doubt whatsoever that Syrians are being targeted by Assad’s security forces, their characterization by the western media as being “pro-democracy protesters” is beginning to bear remarkable resemblance to how Libyan militants, aided by Al-Qaeda terrorists, were portrayed as “innocent protesters” by the global establishment media even as they were commandeering tanks, flying fighter jets, and carrying rocket-propelled grenades.

Despite the vacuum of reliable information emerging out of the country, corporate media outlets, while in one breath conceding that accounts by dubious human rights organizations are not verifiable, have nevertheless blamed Assad for the massacres of hundreds of innocent people.
The evidence indicates that such atrocities are being wildly exaggerated, just as they were before the air strikes were launched on Libya. For instance, a clip used by numerous western media outlets to depict Syrians being beaten to death by Assad’s security forces turned out to be a video of Iraqis from the 1990′s.

“The video does not “support” the story that the Guardian says it does,” writes Landis. “The soldier denies that he was ordered to fire on people. Instead, he says he was on his way to Banyas to enforce security. He does not say that he was shot at by government agents or soldiers. In fact he denies it. The interviewer tries to put words in his mouth but the soldier clearly denies the story that the interviewer is trying to make him confess to. In the video, the wounded soldier is surrounded by people who are trying to get him to say that he was shot by a military officer. The soldier says clearly, “They [our superiors] told us, ‘Shoot at them IF they shoot at you.’”

Landis also highlights how a document purporting to be an order for Syrian intelligence agents to shoot on army officers and security agents in order to “deceive the enemy” is “clearly a fake.”

“What army, after all, would survive even days if its top officers were publishing orders to shoot its own officers?” asks Landis.

Further evidence of outside intervention comes in the form of reports that snipers are shooting at both protesters and Syrian security forces from rooftops. Iran’s Al-Alam News Network claims that the men, working on behalf of Saudi and US intelligence agencies, are killing protesters in order to radicalize them and fan the flames of unrest.

The video below purports to show a sniper being driven by a motorcyclist to a building before he takes up position on the roof and begins firing on demonstrators. Syrian security forces surround the building and a shootout allegedly ensues.

American-Syrian Eddie Sansoul, who is currently living in Syria, writes to us to express his shock at how events in his country are being completely misreported by the western media.

Sansoul claims that media coverage of events has been dominated by “false eyewitnesses,” “faked videos” and staged events, carefully broadcast to give the impression that the vast majority of Syrians are rebelling against President Assad, when in reality the malcontents represent a tiny minority of Islamic extremists.iGo.com is the source for universal, eco-friendly charging solutions and power-management products.
“Syrians in major cities such as Damascus and Aleppo are trying to campaign alongside Bashar Al Assad to spread awareness about the plans to destabilize Syria for the favor of Israel and US’s interests in the region,” writes Sansoul, dismissing the influence of the so-called protesters as non-existent while claiming that western media outlets are showing images of demonstrators in Egypt and Yemen and claiming the pictures are coming out of Syria.

“The heart of the problem remains in a small city called Daraa which counts about 1 million in population and among them a few thousand who are Jihadist or extremists who are creating all the news you see in the mainstream media,” he states, characterizing the so-called protesters as “an organized Mafia paid by US intelligence to carry out attacks on the Syrian people,” as a pretext for a US-UN backed regime change.Like the aforementioned footage out of 1990′s Iraq which is being erroneously broadcast as evidence of Syrian security forces beating civilians to death, Sansoul warns that years-old footage of torture victims from different countries is being released as false evidence of Assad-ordered brutality.

As Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, recently revealed, 5,000 so-called “activists” from numerous middle eastern countries, including Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, were recently involved in training sessions organized and paid for by the US government. “They went back and there’s a ripple effect,” Posner said of the wave of unrest now sweeping the region.

Once again, the evidence clearly indicates that the United States, Britain and other NATO powers are using their Al-Qaeda allies to destabilize Syria in order to launch yet another war under the manufactured pretext of humanitarian aid, despite the fact that the prolonged bombardment of Libya has already cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

While there is undoubtedly violence occurring in Syria on both sides, it comes as a result of a regime trying to cling to power battling against a militant opposition backed by western forces. Just like Libya, this is a civil war, it has little to do with “pro-democracy protesters,” and a lot to do with leaving Syria vulnerable to be swallowed up by the globalists as their next acquisition in the course of the “Arab Spring” wave of unrest that they helped to promulgate and direct in the first place.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

On March 20, 2003, the BBC reported that the country faced “the largest and most costly humanitarian crisis in history” following the U.S. invasion and the collapse of the oil-for-food program and the departure of U.N. personnel.

Iraq was dependent on globalist hand-outs after more than a decade of medieval sanctions. 500,000 children died as a result. Former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the engineered murder of a half million innocents was a price worth paying. Children of nations declared to be “rogue” by banksters are always the first to suffer and die.

Actually, according to UNICEF, 1,211,285 children died of embargo-related causes between August 1990 and August 1997, a number that reminds one of the toll inflicted on Cambodia by Pol Pot, a CIA asset who was allowed to conduct genocide after Kissinger and Nixon killed around 600,000 civilians and paved the way for Pol Pot’s slaughter of from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million.
Before George Bush the Elder invaded Iraq under the false pretense of protecting the former Iraqi province of Kuwait – before the Brits took over, Kuwait was the Ottoman Empire province of Basra – Iraq enjoyed 92 percent access to clean water, 93 percent access to high quality health care and high educational and nutritional standards. It was the envy of the Arab world, despite the rule of the CIA-trained thug Saddam Hussein.

Now 55 percent have no clean drinking water and 80 percent are not connected to the sewage system. Prior to Bush’s invasion to save the slant drilling monarchy in Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, illiteracy in Iraq had been all but eliminated. Now the illiteracy rate has increased to over 25 percent. In some parts of the country, it stands at 40-50 percent among women, according to the NGO Save the Children.

Now the elite are doing the same thing to Libya, a country with the highest living standard in Africa. The country ranks 53rd on the HDI index, better than all other African countries and also better than Saudi Arabia. Libya has the highest GDP at purchasing power parity per capita of all of Africa. The country has a lower percentage of people living below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

Libya is now in the process of being decimated by Obama, Sarkozy, NATO, the United Nations and a cobbled together globalist coalition of the willing. A relatively well-off Arab country cannot be allowed to remain outside the clutches of international finance. It must be under the iron-fisted rule of a thug who takes orders from Wall Street and international finance. The Libyan people must be on the edge of starvation and under constant threat of bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, and other preventable diseases like Iraq now is. Waterborne disease has been off the charts since the Pentagon targeted the country’s water supply system during the 1991 Gulf War.

Gaddafi is no doubt a dictator, but he is no better or worse than any number of other dictators, including Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. In fact, prior to the engineered conflict to take out Gaddafi, the United Nations praised Libya’s human rights record. “In the course of preparation for war, the country was suddenly transformed into the most evil dictatorship. Even many war opponents accepted this characterization as their own,” writes John Catalinotto.
The World Food Program says current food stocks in Libya may last only 45 to 60 days after which many people will be forced to cut back on meals. Daly Belgasmi of the WFP told reporters in Geneva that Libya’s private economy has been hit by the exodus of foreigners who worked in food production such as bakeries.

The war against Gaddafi, of course, has nothing to do with human rights, a humanitarian crisis, or democracy. It is not even specifically about oil.

It is about the dollar and its status as a reserve currency. “The fiat US dollar only survives as the world’s reserve currency because the majority of the oil producers demand payment in dollars,” writes Ron Holland.

“Remember, it’s all about the dollar being maintained for a while longer as the world reserve currency and oil resources. The establishment of democratic forms of government or whether the people will have a decision over their future in the area is immaterial to the survival of the status quo in Washington and the region.”
–

Alex Jones and Midas Resources has come together to offer you three of the most hard hitting videos ever produced: End Game, Obama Deception, and Fall of the Republic.

After viewing this collection you will know who is pulling the strings of our puppet government. It’s not about Left or Right: it’s about a One World Government. The international banks’ plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation.
If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this eye-opening film collection is for you. For a limited time this collection is being offered with three constitutional silver dollars, the real money our for-fathers intended for us to use. Order this special collection today and get the perfect solution to the perfect economic storm.

Unleashing yet another deft salvo of Orwelliandoublespeak, the British government announced today that it would be sending in military forces to “help” Libyan rebels while still insisting that it is not sending in military forces, as the EU gears up to dispatch a further 1,000 troops, also under the dubious pretense of preventing humanitarian suffering.

Bulk SMS Gateway – Send SMS’s from your PC; easy integration!
Now that the globalists’ Al-Qaeda backed rebel forces are getting soundly trounced by Gaddafi’s army, western powers have embarked on a propaganda crusade to create a pretext for a ground invasion, despite the fact that it directly violates their own UN resolution. By sending in scout parties of troops, the globalists are desperately trying to goad Gaddafi into attacking so-called “peacekeepers” so that a case for wider intervention can be concocted.

Despite dubious claims that the role of British military assets will be to teach rebels “how not to get killed,”as we have documented, the entire “humanitarian” ruse that has been used to sell the aggressive act of war is a complete fabrication. The EU has made it clear that if their forces are impeded in any way from taking over entire regions of the country, they will attack Gaddafi’s troops.

Figures provided by Human Rights Watch prove that Gaddafi has not embarked on a deliberate policy to massacre innocent people. After two months of warfare, just 257 people in Misurata, a city with a population of 400,000, have been killed. Of the 949 wounded, just 22 are women, less than 3 per cent.

“In their interim findings, the campaign group claimed they had been able to “corroborate civilian casualties and fatalities due to Nato bombing” but “could find no evidence that three areas of Tripoli cited in UN resolution 1973 had been subjected to government forces bombardment,” reports Sky News.

Globalist forces are now fully committed to a ground invasion and destabilization campaign in Africa’s richest oil country, and they will not stop at manufacturing any pretext to oversee regime change in Libya. A staged attack on western interests either domestically or abroad will be blamed on Gaddafi, or a new humanitarian hoax in a similar vein to Kuwaiti incubator babies or Serbian death camps will be invented as a means of securing a second UN resolution to completely ransack the country and overthrow Gaddafi.

As the EU prepares to invade Libya with ground troops under the contrived pretext of “humanitarian aid,” Texas University Professor Alan J. Kuperman highlights the fact that the entire justification behind the NATO-backed aggression has been proven fraudulent by casualty figures that clearly indicate Gaddafi has not deliberately targeted civilians.

Appearing on Russia Today, Kuperman dismissed the Obama administration’s claim that there would be a “bloodbath” in Libya if there was no foreign intervention, pointing out that there is no evidence Gaddafi is deliberately targeting civilians and engaging in massacres.

Asked about claims of Gaddafi violence against innocents, Professor Kuperman responded, “There is no evidence of that in the cities that Gaddafi has captured either totally or partially,” citing Human Rights Watch figures that clearly illustrate how Gaddafi forces are targeting combatants and not innocent people.

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Kuperman accuses Barack Obama of “grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya,” highlighting the fact that the evidence clearly indicates Gaddafi is “Not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.”

“Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties,” writes Kuperman, adding that the only thing to deepen the humanitarian suffering of innocents was the NATO-led attack, which will indefinitely prolong the civil war.

Of course, to the western media, rebels driving tanks, flying fighter jets and carrying RPG launchers are still classed as “protesters” or “civilians” in the Orwellian doublespeak world of humanitarian hypocrisy.

While the corporate media has played up Gaddafi’s supposed attacks on innocent people, evidence of which is thin on the ground, videos, images and testimony of rebel fighters engaging in massacres and beatings of innocents, including children, has been universally ignored.
While it’s obvious that there have been acts of brutal retaliation carried out by both sides that have killed innocent people, to claim that Gaddafi is overseeing a deliberate policy to attack innocents even as he battles against the might of NATO and the western-backed rebel forces is brazenly deceptive. Even the New York Times had to admit that the rebels were “making vastly inflated claims of his (Gaddafi’s) barbaric behavior,” and had “no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda,” after the much promised “bloodbath” in Benghazi never materialized.

The humanitarian hoax behind the assault on Africa’s richest oil country was invented out of whole cloth to prevent what globalist forces feared most, the defeat of their own Al-Qaeda backed rebel forces.

“The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels,” writes Kuperman. “To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for “humanitarian’’ intervention that would save their rebellion.”

Muammar Qaddafi, Libya's leader, speaks at an equestrian show at the Tor di Quinto cavalry school in Rome, in August, 2010. Photographer: Victor Sokolowicz/Bloomberg

NATO countries sought to bridge differences over their Libya mission as Russia said the alliance’s actions may be exceeding those authorized by the UN Security Council.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers today in Berlin that he’s confident his request for additional ground-attack aircraft will be met, even though the U.S. and France rejected deploying more planes.

“We have got indications that nations will deliver what is needed,” said Rasmussen, without identifying which countries or confirming reports that the request is for about eight warplanes to attack Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.Want an extra $1500 for bills by tomorrow? Apply now!

North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders “are now realizing that this is not a very short mission,” German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said in an interview today. “It takes much longer, it’s much more complicated, it’s much more demanding than some had expected.”

NATO’s Libya operations may become “stuck in the sand,” Hoyer said, adding that it would be “a nightmare” if Qaddafi remains in control of a divided and failed state. Germany is one of the NATO members opposed to the military campaign, although it supports economic and political measures to force Qaddafi out of power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, challenging the extent of the military operations, said that NATO must move “urgently” toward a political solution. In Berlin to participate in talks with NATO foreign ministers, he said that “using excessive military force will lead to additional casualties among civilians.”
Oil rebounded as U.S. consumer sentiment and industrial output increased, signaling higher fuel demand in the world’s biggest crude-consuming country. Crude oil for May delivery increased $1.50, or 1.4 percent, to $109.61 a barrel at 1:33 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.“Send and receive faxes online with Nextiva FAX”“
Regional Developments

Elsewhere in the region, Syrian security forces blocked roads to thwart protesters whose defiance of President Bashar al-Assad persisted for a fifth Friday, following the announcement late yesterday of Cabinet changes, activists said. Routes to the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Harasta were blocked by vans and concrete blocks, as thousands took to the streets, Damascus-based human-rights activist Razan Zaitouneh said on her Facebook page. There were rallies in Homs, Aleppo, Qamishli, the port city of Latakia and Daraa, a flashpoint for dissent last month, she said.

Clashes between protesters and authorities in Jordan left 83 security officers and eight civilians injured, Al Arabiya television reported, citing the country’s head of general security. In Yemen, protesters around the country rejected a Gulf Cooperation Council plan to resolve political turmoil because it doesn’t insist on President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s immediate departure.

In Libya, the limitations of NATO’s air campaign have become evident as forces loyal to Qaddafi stepped up their assault on Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, and pressed their attack on rebels near the oil port city of Brega.
Misrata Bombarded

Al-Jazeera television cited rebels as saying 20 people, including five Egyptians, were killed in Misrata last night by Qaddafi troops and that tanks bombarded the city today near the Kasr Ahmed district. More than 6,500 foreign nationals are stranded at Misrata’s port, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in an e-mailed statement.

Foreign ministers from NATO’s 28 member states and leaders from other allied nations met in Berlin to discuss the Libyan conflict.

On providing more assistance to rebels, including military aid, Clinton said “there have been a number of discussions on how to best provide that assistance.”

“We are also searching for ways to provide funding for the opposition so that that they can take care of some of these needs themselves,” including helping the rebels sell oil, she said. The rebels are seeking to borrow $2 billion secured by Libyan government assets abroad that have been frozen.

Only 14 NATO members — plus Sweden, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — are participating in some aspect of the military operation known as “Unified Protector,” most under rules preventing them from attacking Qaddafi’s forces except in self-defense. About five NATO nations, led by France and the U.K, are known to be targeting Qaddafi’s ground forces.

U.S. Role Limited

The call for more warplanes, which Rasmussen said wasn’t directed at a specific alliance member, came 10 days after the U.S. withdrew its ground-attack planes from civilian protection missions. The U.S. continues to fly F-16 missions against Libya’s dwindling air defenses, as well as providing a variety of support aircraft for refueling, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Libya is “Europe’s affair” and it’s understandable that the U.S. isn’t playing a leading role, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said in an interview on LCI Television. “The U.S. has two large obligations with Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“So long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds,” they wrote in a letter published in newspapers, including the Times of London, Le Figaro and the International Herald Tribune.

NATO said in a statement yesterday that allies taking part in the conflict set three conditions for ending air strikes on Qaddafi’s forces: an end to all attacks by Qaddafi loyalists on civilians, withdrawing soldiers to bases, and allowing aid into the country.

NATO said in a statement that its jets yesterday hit eight bunkers, four ammunition storage sites, and two armored personnel carriers near Sirte; three bunkers and a helicopter near Misrata; an SA-3 radar and SA-3 missile launcher near the Tunisian border; and a tank, two ammunition storage sites and a radar near Tripoli. NATO said it flew 60 missions looking for possible ground-attack targets, up from 58 on April 13.

The question as to whyUS-led NATO forces are determined to engineer a regime change in Libya is now becoming clear. Whilst media pundits and political experts still argue over whether the Libyan rebel gangs are actually being backed and directed by US, UK and Israel intelligence agencies, broader long-range Western policy objectives for Libya are being completely ignored.

One only has to read the strategic briefings in U.S. AFRICOM documents to realise the true endgame in Libya: the control of valuable resources and the eviction of China from North Africa.

When the US formed AFRICOM in 2007, some 49 countries signed on to the US military charter for Africa but one country refused: Libya. Such a treacherous act by Libya’s leader Moummar Qaddafi would only sow the seeds for a future conflict down the road in 2011.

NATO: It’s been reduced to a mere private security force for western corporate interests.

According to Dr Paul Craig Roberts, the situation with Qaddafi is much different than the other recent protests in the Arab world. “Why is NATO there?” has become to real question, says Roberts, who fears that risky involvement stemming from American influence could lead to catastrophic breaking point in Libya.

WHY WE ARE IN LIBYA: a revealing interview with Dr Paul Craig Roberts.

CHINESE INTERESTS IN LIBYA

According to Bejing’s Ministry of Commerce, China’s current contracts in Libya number no less than 50 large projects involving a contracts in excess of 18 billion USD. What is even more revealing here is that due to the recent instability in the North African region, China’s investments have taken a serious hit. The recent political turmoil in the region has caused China’s foreign contracted projects to drop with new contracts amounting to $ 3,470,000,000, down 53.2%. Among them, the amount of new contracts in Libya, down by 45.3%, 13.9% less turnover; to Algeria, the amount of the contract fell 97.1%, turnover decreased by 10.7% – all within the first 2 months of this year.

In addition to the numerous Chinese investments in Libya, the North African nation has also recently completed one of the most expensive and advance water works projects in world history- Libya’s Great Man Made River. A 30 year venture, finished only last year, gives Libya the potential for an agricultural and economic boom that would certainly mean trouble for competing agri-markets in neighbouring Israel and Egypt. It could also transform Libya into the emerging “bread basket” of Africa. With global food prices on the rise, and Libya possessing a stable currency and cheap domestic energy supply, it doesn’t take an economic genius to see what role Libya could play in the global market place.

VALUABLE ASSET: Libya’s Great Man Made River.

Central to AFRICOM’s strategic goals is to confront the increasing Chinese influence on the continent. One AFRICOM study suggests that China will eventually dispatch troops to Africa to defend its interests there:

“Now China has achieved a stage of economic development which requires endless supplies of African raw materials and has started to develop the capacity to exercise influence in most corners of the globe. The extrapolation of history predicts that distrust and uncertainty will inevitably lead the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to Africa in staggering numbers…”
So we have a vocalised fear on the part of US military planners, of a military confrontation with China… in Africa. Today it’s Libya, but tomorrow, it will be in Sudan. Does this sound a little familiar? Well, it should…

THE NEW COLD WAR WITH CHINA

What this data does show clearly is that the strategic policy objectives outlined in Washington’s AFRICOM, particularly those ones designed to confront and minimise China’s economic interest in Africa, are working well as a result of instability in the region. In effect, what we are witnessing here is the dawn of a new Cold War between the US-EURO powers and China. This new cold war will feature many of the same elements of the long and protracted US-USSR face-off we saw in the second half of the 20th century. It will take place off shore, in places like Africa, South America, Central Asia and through old flashpoints like Korea and the Middle East.

What makes this new cold war much deeper and more subtle than the previous one, is that it will not be cloaked in a popular ideology like ‘Capitalism vs Communism’. This new war is all about one thing: natural resources. The capture and control of the world’s remaining resources and energy supplies will be the theme which will govern- and literally fuel, all major conflicts in the 21st century. It will be fought through numerous proxies, and on far-flung pitches across the globe but it will never be spoken of by the White House Press Secretary or the Foreign Office in Downing Street.

Early reports out of Libya confirm that “Rebels” are being backed and directed by Western intelligence agencies.

INSURGENTS NOT PROTESTORS

The great PR spin trick in the run up to NATO’s carpet bombing run in Libya was the West’s ability to characterise Libya’s violent armed gangs as mere protestors. The average American, British or French media consumer equated the Libyan uprising with those previously in Tunisia and Egypt. Then reality of course was that they were anything but. However, the bells of freedom and democracy had indeed rung, so all that was really needed at that point was a clever WMD-like diplomatic trick to dazzle the rows of intellectually challenged diplomats at the UN in New York City. The ‘No Fly Zone’ was repackaged and worked well enough for politicians to get their foot in the door to their respective War Rooms.

It seems to have worked so far but the next phase- ground troops and a NATO military occupation of Libya, will be somewhat more complicated to execute without sustaining heavy political fallout. All of these complexed efforts are used to shroud western corporate and military long-term agendas in the region, all part and parcel of the New Resources Cold War with China.

A military and CIA advocate appears on CNN to promote the White House party line on regime change.

HISTORY IS STILL A BITCH

Few will argue that the average western observer and mainstream media consumer suffers from chronic historical amnesia. For Americans in particular, relevant history only extends as far back as the previous season of Dancing With the Stars, or American Idol. Some might argue that this is by design, that on whole the masses have been conditioned to be passive actors in the new media-rich modern democracy because it makes managing the herds much easier.inhabitliving.com – Modern Bedding – FREE shipping on orders over $200.00! Save Now
The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq have yet to return home for the US and Great Britain- both projects are still going concerns for the massive cartel of western corporations. This has allowed ambitious bureaucrats in Washington, London and Paris to try their hand again in Libya. In time however, Americans and Europeans will come to learn what ever citizen and subject already learned many times over throughout history. In theory it may work, but in practice, “Occupation” is a paradox. The US-UK may draw plans in private to occupy an Iraq or a Libya indefinitely but history doesn’t jibe with these imperial ambitions.

It will end one day, and end badly because the Neo-Roman Anglo-American Empire with all its legions abroad, cannot manage its fragile domestic affair back at home. First comes the fall of the Senate, then the rise of the Caesar, and finally the collapse of the Denarius($) at home. The once great empire goes out with a whimper- too fat and too bankrupt to carry on.

As the Great Resource Wars of the 21st century continue to rage on unabated, one question comes to mind: what will mindful citizens in the aggressor countries do to change this present course of history? Judging by ease at which the West managed to pull of their latest heist in Libya, I would say… very little right now.

GENEVA — Snipers are targeting children in the besieged rebel-held Libyan city of Misrata, the U.N.’ s children agency said Friday.

Hundreds of residents have been killed and wounded in the assault by Gadhafi’s forces on Libya‘s third-largest city, and residents are running short of water, food and medicine.

“What we have are reliable and consistent reports of children being among the people targeted by snipers in Misrata,” UNICEFspokeswoman Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva.
The information was based on local sources, Mercado said. She was unable to say how many children have been wounded or killed in this way.

A spokesman for the Geneva-based aid group, Christian Cardon, told The Associated Press that children and other civilians not involved in hostilities are never a legitimate target in an armed conflict. “But without having any more information, we can’t comment on what is happening there,” he said.

Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Department of Justice and chairman of American Freedom Agenda writes in his 15-page argument of Obama’s course that “Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor.”

Fein is a small-government conservative who worked on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and also called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and his work doesn’t represent the Republican Party line. But it comes as some Republicans on the Hill, led by Senator Rand Paul, object vociferously to Obama’s decision to strike targets in Libya without Congressional authorization.

“He’s been more bold than any other president,” said Fein, who said Obama has failed to secure congressional approval for his military action in a much more brazen way than previous administrations.

“If he can wipe out the war powers authorization, why can’t he wipe out Congress’s authority to spend?” asked Fein. ” If we’re going to be a government of laws, and not descend into empire, this is Caesar crossing the Rubicon.”

Fein said a number of Congressional offices have expressed interest in his proposal.

“They actually need to defend constitutional prerogatives,” said Fein. “There’s definitely been interest on the Hill. There’s at least two dozen who have been open to the idea that this is a serious constitutional crisis.”

Fein’s articles of impeachment discuss the run-up to the Libya conflict and conclude, “In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”

The article of impeachment and three subsections are after the jump.(with Byron Tau)

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has usurped the exclusive power of Congress to initiate war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the United States Constitution by unilaterally commencing war against the Republic of Libya on March 19, 2011, declaring that Congress is powerless to constrain his conduct of the war, and claiming authority in the future to commence war unilaterally to advance whatever he ordains is in the national interest. By so doing and declaring, Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor as hereinafter elaborated.

I.
THE IMPEACHMENT POWER

1. Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution provides: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

2. According to James Madison’s Records of the Convention, 2:550; Madison, 8 Sept., Mr. George Mason objected to an initial proposal to confine impeachable offenses to treason or bribery:

Why is the provision restrained to Treason & bribery only? Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many great and dangerous offences. Hastings is not guilty of Treason. Attempts to subvert the Constitution may not be Treason as above defined–As bills of attainder which have saved the British Constitution are forbidden, it is the more necessary to extend: the power of impeachments.

3. Delegates to the Federal Convention voted overwhelmingly to include “high crimes and misdemeanors” in Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution specifically to ensure that “attempts to subvert the Constitution” would fall within the universe of impeachable offences. Id.

4. Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Federal Convention, characterized impeachable offenses in Federalist 65 as, “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words, from the violation or abuse of some public trust. They are of a nature which with peculiar propriety may be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done to society itself.”

5. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment against then President Richard M. Nixon for actions “subversive of constitutional government.”

6. Father of the Constitution, James Madison, observed that, “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…. War is the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”

7. James Madison also instructed that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

8. The exclusive congressional power to commence war under Article I, section VIII, clause XI of the Constitution is the pillar of the Republic and the greatest constitutional guarantor of individual liberty, transparency, and government frugality.

II.
THE “DECLARE WAR” CLAUSE

9. Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the United States Constitution provides: “The Congress shall have the power … To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”

10. Article II, Section II, Clause I of the United States Constitution provides: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” Read the rest of this entry »